Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Freepers Spew Hate at Sotomayor

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has a new book out that tells very personal stories of her rise from an extremely poor family to becoming a top student at Princeton and Yale and then to the highest court in the land. The Daily Mail recounts some of those stories:

Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor revealed the fact that her ex-husband brought a bag of Quaaludes to his new wife on their wedding night.

She also told other unusually personal stories about her upbringing in the Bronx, like how she unknowingly brought her cousin to a drug den where he shot up heroin…

Sotomayor says she was working as a prosecutor when she gave Nelson a lift to what he told her only after the fact was a drug den in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx and waited for him in her car while he shot up heroin inside.

The book also gives a look into her romantic life, detailing her marriage to her high school sweetheart, Kevin Noonan, soon after they graduated from college. They divorced during Sotomayor’s time as a prosecutor in Manhattan, but parted amicably.

One detail Sotomayor notes is that on their wedding night, Noonan produced a bag of Quaaludes- the hynotic-sedative that was popular in the 1970s- that was a gift from his friends. She insisted he flush the pills down the toilet.

A decent and reasonable person would be impressed at her ability to overcome such a disadvantaged childhood to take her place at the highest levels of the legal profession. Even a reasonable conservative would laud this as an example of that “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” idea they love so much. But the assholes at the Free Republic, being neither decent nor reasonable, spew hatred and bigotry instead:

Nothing like a former drug addict scarred psychotic to make life/death decisions.

Learn to read, dumbass. She wasn’t the drug addict. And the only one acting psychotic here is you.

I could imagine a guy wanting to get high after realizing what he had married. She’s lucky he didn’t shoot himself in the head…

Smart man. I guess if he had to do her… A bag of ludes would be ideal…

Oh it’s ok for liberals because they are known to be immoral scumbags. Now for a conservative it would be awful. Drugs on your wedding night, wwhat (sic) a great example for the kids of America…

I would have brought just an empty bag to put over her head…

I would of (sic) brought rat poison!…

She married….a man?…

no wonder barry liked her so much, so much in common. both communists, both La Raza cheerleaders, both druggies, and they both like sex with guys…

Brings new meaning to the old phrase “a two-bagger.” She is one for sure…

So is she a homo or not…

I guess they were out of cyanide…

Hopefully it was a brown paper bag sufficient to cover that melon…

Shouldn’t she be charged with Felony Posession (sic) considering she just confessed?? I propose that There Shall be NO Statute of Limitations for Any Public Servant or Public Employee for ANY Criminal Act or Violation of ANY LAW…

I’m sure he needed the ludes for himself to bed that creature…

Are you sure that isn’t a triple-bagger (the extra one is for the dog so he doesn’t howl)?…

Be honest–if you’d just married that, you’d be taking ‘ludes as well…

Elena Kegan is the homo…

Went back and looked at a pic of Sonia Sodomizer. I do not blame him…

Said “Wise Latina Female” turns out to be just another nasty drug using commie…

She reminds me of the old joke of what did the Mexican do with his first fifty cent piece? Married her…

Now this bloated hobag gets to cash in on her recent found fame. Three years ago no one knew who she was. But now that this creature sits on the Supreme Court she can rake in a few million from her tawdry biography. Of course she’ll include the garbage anecdotes from her life. This is what sells books, while demeaning the Supreme Court. Not that Justice Roberts didn’t do that too with his illogical dance to Obama-Care-— Liberals love $$$$$$$$ and hobag Sotomayor proves it.

Gosh, I can’t imagine why the Republican party can’t seem to attract a majority of women or racial minorities to support him. It’s a mystery that will never be solved.

Comments

The Freepers showed themselves long ago to be a toxic waste dump — a precursor, if you will, to the slimepit of Abbie Smith’s “Monument” posts. The best thing to do with that lot is to just post some warning signs and avoid giving them any more attention until they’re done throwing tantrums and are ready to clean themselves up and start acting like grownups again.

Oh it’s ok for liberals because they are known to be immoral scumbags. Now for a conservative it would be awful.

Now that was funny. I still remember all the ranting and raving about those unwed, pregnant teenagers that must be godless, liberal whores that the conservatives kept yapping about…until Bristol Palin showed up.

As best as I can tell, this country’s conservatives do not own a mirror…

Ms. Smith has, over the past 6 months, cleaned up her act. Virtually all her posts over that period have been science based. She hasn’t even beat up on her favorite previous targets, Chris Mooney and Rebecca Watson.

Even a reasonable conservative would laud this as an example of that “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” idea they love so much.

Claim to love so much. From what I’ve seen of the U.S. conservative movement in the past few years, I’ve seen precious little evidence of this and lot more evidence that what they actually support is hereditary privilege.

I still remember all the ranting and raving about those unwed, pregnant teenagers that must be godless, liberal whores that the conservatives kept yapping about…until Bristol Palin showed up. –unbound

Hahaha! So true. Like how a shit-ton of welfare recipients are conservatives and how prisons are filled to the brim with good Christians. They’re hating on their own party members and supporters. It’s all a big show; reality doesn’t make a lick of difference.

I really love it when conservatives rant and rave about affirmative action in college admissions for for racial minorities. Nary a word about legacy admissions, like Dubya, whose College Board scores would not have gained him so much as an interview at Yale if his name had been Joe Shlabotnik.

FreeRepublic is, quite literally, distilled insanity. Back when I first became aware of it, they did actually have a good number of fairly sane members, until the purges started.

First they banned the atheists and non-believers, then they banned the McCain supporters, and finally they banned the Romney supporters* (not that there were many left by then).

All that’s left now is unadulterated lunacy.

* The site owner and original wingnut, Jim Robinson, repeatedly banned anyone who expressed the mildest support for Mitt Romney during the primary season and all the way up to the final few weeks of the election campaign. Then suddenly, he did an about face and threw his support behind Romney, because his dislike of Romney was surpassed by one thing — his utter hatred of President Obama. Of course, after the election, Romney was once again persona non grata on the site. Yes, there is a lunatic in charge of that asylum.

Free Republic is teeming with sexually insecure men who lash out reflexively at women and gay men. Since Sotomayor is a powerful liberal woman, she has to be a dyke who can resist their masculine charms. (Otherwise, you see, she’d be their docile love slave, just like women ought to be.) Ditto when it comes to homosexuality in men. Unless gay guys are repressed by society, they will insult Freeper men by coming on to them, powerless to resist the attraction of Freeper hyper-masculinity. (The Freepers flatter themselves beyond all reason — but beyond all reason is where they live.)

Rather than going on about how Republicans are such hypocrites because so many prominent members of their ranks have done such immoral things, it would be nice if the response to stuff like this was more along the lines of:

1) It doesn’t matter how fuckable Sonia Sotomayor is, thank you very much, and it wouldn’t even be brought up if she were male (Can you imagine? Talk about bizarro world), and

2) There’s nothing immoral or shameful about having been poor, or known people who have done illicit drugs, or even having done illicit drugs yourself. Again, thanks very much.

In other words, responding to this by saying “But look how immoral they are!” kind of buys into the notion that there is something immoral about all of those things. That there’s something immoral about being…well….Sonia Sotomayor. Which there isn’t. Not one bit.

And then they say: Hispanics are actually very conservative. They should be voting Republican, but they don’t because the Democrats give them things for free (which, of course, Hispanic people don’t find insulting in the least. [/sarc] )

Unfortunately, given the current insanity of the Rethuglican Party, it would be quite hard to find a Rethuglican to vote for. However, I have, for the past several elections declined to vote for our Congressional representative, James Moran, who is a liberal Democrat, but is also an Israel basher.

I truly hope that it’s his committment to investigative bloggarism that makes him descent into that foul nest and not some secret, dark urging to be punished. If the latter is the case I think we might be able to take up a collection and hire Vicky Jackson to come to his house and sing KKKristmas KKKarols, while standing on her head! {;>)

The last part of that headline is clever in a disgusting sort of way. It says she “unknowingly drove her cousin to shoot up heroin.”

So if I bought some copies of the Daily Mail, put them in the trunk of my car, drove to a trash barrel and deposited them there, I could say with perfect (but deceptive) truth that I drove The Daily Mail into the dumpster.

Something for ERV to apologise for, she repeatedly makes this “point” on the pit, outright saying Greta is a con-artist and faking illness with no evidence is apology-worthy in my book. I feel sorry for someone with so little empathy and trust that she needs scans of a persons uterus before committing to donate a little cash to help them out.

What is Greta Christina doing with all the cash she collected for her cancer hysterectomy, a relatively routine procedure (categorized as ‘low risk’) that over half a million women undergo every year in the US alone?

Look, if someone is stupid enough to ‘donate’ money to someone who has provided no evidence of medical need, much less evidence of any form of financial hardship, whatever. Fool and their money soon parted blah blah. But this is TEH ATHIEST COMOONITY, and I dont want our people fleeced.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THE ‘CANCER’ CASH, GRETA CHRISTINA?

I’d personally much rather be part of any atheist community other than ERVs shitty pit that lets comments like this go unchallenged. Any hate from Aratina (I’ve seen none) would be justified….

I don’t really care about Abbie Smith or atheist conventions, but the fact that some people responded to examples of over-the-top misogynist, racist, sadist ravings from dangerous right wingers by…riffing into complaints about Abbie Smith’s insufficient purity…is pretty pathetic.

I’m sorry to have started a flame war this way, but it’s true. It’s a rather blatant false equivalence to compare Abbie Smith to commenters at FR, on many levels. Read this carefully – I am not saying that I agree with everything Abbie Smith has ever said – I am saying that even if I disagree with some things she has said she is clearly not equivalent to the FR commenters Ed Brayton has quoted above.

Gretchen said –

1) It doesn’t matter how fuckable Sonia Sotomayor is, thank you very much, and it wouldn’t even be brought up if she were male (Can you imagine? Talk about bizarro world), and

2) There’s nothing immoral or shameful about having been poor, or known people who have done illicit drugs, or even having done illicit drugs yourself. Again, thanks very much.

100% agreement.

In other words, responding to this by saying “But look how immoral they are!” kind of buys into the notion that there is something immoral about all of those things. That there’s something immoral about being…well….Sonia Sotomayor. Which there isn’t. Not one bit.

I think that pointing out hypocrisy is a valuable and powerful thing to do. I don’t think that pointing out that someone’s opposition to “x” is hypocritical is the same as saying that “x” is wrong. For example, if I read about prominent Soviet politburo members who were hypocritical opportunists and didn’t really care about Soviet communism, I don’t conclude “Since being a hypocrite and not really believing in it was bad, Soviet communism must have been a good idea”. I merely conclude that in addition to Soviet communism being a bad idea to begin with (in my opinion), some supporters of it were hypocrites.

For another example, when anti-gay figures are shown to be closeted but active gay people themselves, pointing that out doesn’t send the message “gays are bad”.

It demonstrates in a powerful way how conflicted, insecure, and dishonest anti-gay figures tend to be.

Unlike those, whether at FR or in other places, who seek to generate an increasingly small and “pure” “movement” for themselves, I’m an active progressive who wants positive social change, and for positive social change you have to persuade people. It cannot otherwise happen.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THE ‘CANCER’ CASH, GRETA CHRISTINA?

That sentiment is extremely harshly expressed and crudely unsympathetic, but to ask that question is not amoral. Many people with no money, no resources, no insurance, and no blog get cancer. I support 100% universal access to best quality medical care. In the mean time, institutions and charities the provide charity on a need basis are the best stop gap. It makes perfect sense for anyone with cancer to leverage their resources and position to get the best possible treatment, but appeals to individual cases, based on the likeable nature of the patient, while inevitable and moving, do raise ethical questions, as they imply that some patients deserve care more than others in medically equivalent situations. Inarticulate, illiterate, uncharismatic homeless people equally deserve best quality medical care (and homes, too, but let’s take it one step at a time).

Considering that when Greta asked for help she stated what she needed the money for, I don’t recall her saying anything about starting a charity of some sort. I took her plea for help as one person to another. I responded to that the same as I would anyone whose life I have an interest in. I don’t need an accounting of what she has done with the money, any more than I need it from any other person I choose to give help to. Perhaps that makes me an easy mark, meh I can live with it.

perhaps as atheists we should start a charity for our own, in that situation I think some accounting would be appropriate. But to tell us that there are others that suffer and (gasp) are in more horrible situations is not news, tell me instead how we can help them.

I don’t have either the time or inclination to investigate this but it would not surprise me if Ms. Smith’s obvious animosity toward Greta Christina has something to do with the brouhaha a couple of years ago about the episode known as elevatorgate, involving Rebecca Watson. It is no secret that Ms. Smith has nothing but contempt for Ms. Watson and is quite vocal on her blog on the subject. I have a sneaking suspicion that Ms. Christina, like Jen McCreight , may have commented negatively about Ms. Smith’s attitude toward Ms. Watson in general and this episode in particular. I am aware of an exchange of nasty blog posts by Ms. Smith and Ms. McCreight which did neither of them any favors.

I would dispute the, apparently wide held notion, that Ms. Smith is somehow anti-feminist. She is just as contemptuous of Chris Mooney and Casey Luskin as she is of Ms. Watson.

If you say so. I see two groups who belittle women based on poverty, drug use/knowledge and who show outright cruelty towards others.

Even if these things are true about Abbie Smith, they would be things that she has in common with FR commenters, but also probably with the denizens of a typical frat house. They would not make her equivalent to any of those, nor does it make those other groups equivalent to each other.

Actually the political damage done to them often depends on “gays are bad.” What’s more these revelations are often accompanied by homophobic jokes and jeers from the media and liberals.

First of all, I disagree here. I don’t have statistical evidence to back my assertion up, though, so until I do, all I can do is express it as an intuitively reasonable possibility. Anti-gay hypocrites who turn out to be gay are not vilified “because they are gay”. They are vilified because they are hypocrites and hateful. Melissa Etheridge has a better public image than Ted Haggard, even though they are both equally gay. When they are exposed, it does not make being gay look worse, it makes being a raving homophobe look worse.

Also, when you attack liberals, but not conservatives, for being homophobic, putting aside the absurdity, you also border on engaging in the time-honored dodge of conflating private socialization with support for legal rights. (Because, since liberals support gay rights, you must be calling them “homophobes” for some other reason, such as language you perceive as inappropriate.)

I support full rights for all citizens, trivially obviously including people who are gay, including the obvious rights to work, obtain housing, marry a consenting and competent adult, and serve in the military, without fear of arbitrary discrimination.

As far as I know, I have many fewer gay friends than Ann Coulter does. However, she is far, far more homophobic than I am. She wants to continue to deny gay people the right to marry other consenting adults, a basic right that all the rest of us enjoy. That attitude is overtly harmful to gay people. Whether or not I choose to attend the Gay Pride Parade is not.

Conservatives also often reference how many “black friends” liberals have. I’m pretty friendly with a moderate number of black people, but probably not as many as the late Lee Atwater. On the other hand, he created amoral racism-provoking propaganda in the service of right wing political campaigns, something I would never do.

To me, it’s more important to respect people’s rights, an easily achievable goal. It’s quite possible that straight liberals will always seem awkwardly un-PC from time to time, but we won’t be denying anyone the full opportunity to enjoy their rights and achieve their potential.

I’d be curious to know how many of Sotomayor’s haters are baseball fans. I mean, she did save baseball and all… kind of a BFD, and probably a big part of the reason she got the SCOTUS nod in the first place.